Don’t raise a hoop jumper — from by Terri Eichholz
Excerpt:
Yesterday, a dad forwarded this fabulous post from the TED blog. It includes the video of Jane Andraka’s TEDx talk. If that name sounds a bit familiar, but you can’t quite place it, Mrs. Andraka is the mother of two successful young men. One of them is Jack Andraka, a teenager who developed an early-detection test for pancreatic cancer. The other son, Luke, won an international science fair and the MIT Think Award.
Mrs. Andraka speaks about how she helped her sons find their passions, and the responsibility that all parents have to do so. In the Q&A included in the blog post, she says the following,
I saw all these kids who had made themselves into little hoop-jumpers. All of a sudden, for seniors in high school in October, it’s, “Oh, jeez, I need to join some clubs and get my grades up, and then I’ll go to Harvard.” And then whining, “Well, I got all ‘A’s, and I joined Model U.N.” But that’s just not what it’s about. You have to make your own self remarkable. Make them say, “Wow, this couldn’t be any other child.” Don’t be like everybody else.
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